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As most of you head for Grandma's to honor the great feast pilgrims shared with the indigenous peoples right before slaughtering them all wholesale, be sure to remember the exploited, underpaid migrant workers who labored under deplorable conditions so you could celebrate that bloody stain on American history called Thanksgiving. As Mom slides that big ol' tom turkey into the oven, think about how a helpless, innocent, genetically engineered bird was tortured and butchered just so your drunken old man can assert his alpha male status by carving up a carcass on the family dinner table. Then later, as you all sit by the fire, contemplate on the millions of homeless people who won't have a Thanksgiving dinner this year, thanks to the very selfish, materialistic culture that created them. Yes, I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving, knowing that those red stains on your hands aren't from the cranberry sauce.

Personally, I'll be spending the holiday naked in my basement, stabbing myself in the thigh with a fork to atone for 400 years of murder and opression.

It's a question often posed to provoke deep thoughts and recollections of a pivotal turning point in American History. It was a loss of innocence, a testing of our national resolve against conservatism, and an awakening to a dark, evil that until then only lurked hidden beneath a mustard-stained blanket of bourgois ignorance. Or, at least, that's what my history professor at UC Berkeley told me.

I was born three years after the assassination, so I can't remember much about it. I have vague memories of my mother crying alot, and my old man saying "Maybe his head will round-out as he gets older", but that's about it.

However, I vividly remember Reagan stopping a bullet. No one ever asks "Where were you when Reagan was shot?", though. If they did, I'd tell them I was in the library at Kenny Guinn Junior High, reading a paperback copy of Centaur Isle by Piers Anthony. I'll never forget how my best friend Matt Gammet rushed in, out of breath, and said: "Dude, the Antichrist has been shot!"

But before I could ask him to explain his harsh judgement of centaurs, a teary-eyed librarian wheeled in a TV and turned it on.

"Dudes," she announced. "The President's been totally shot, n' shit."

I watched as the TV showed Reagan taking the bullet in sort of a slo-mo half-wave, the cameria zooming in to show a look of shock & pain crossing his face before his was shoved into a limousine by secret service agents.

"You're trippin'!" I replied. "If he was the anti-christ, that dude with the gun never would have got a shot off. A big piece of metal would have fallen off a building and sliced him in half or something."

My friend thought about that for a moment, then suggested, "Not if he had a +9 Ring of Protection."

I snorted at the stupity of the idea. "There's no way, dude. A Ring of Protection won't even stop a level 10 magic user. What makes you think it can stop the fricken Prince of Darkness? And that's a rhetorical question, dude, so don't even bother plying me with more of your bogus bullshit. That goes BEYOND bogus. It's like, so BOGUS that if you look up 'Bogus' in the dictionary, there's like a picture of your level 8 Ranger wearing his bogus +9 Ring of Protection, with smoke coming out of the gaping hole where his head once was cuz Lucifer kicked your bogus ass! HAW HAW!"

"SHHHHH!!!!" the librarian hissed at me from the TV set. "This is fricken history in the making, dudes!"

The screen was now showing the assassination attempt in reverse slo-mo, upside down, with Japanese subtitles and a banjo music accompaniment. A small gaggle of cheerleaders were gathered around the set, talking in hushed whispers. A sense of shock and sadness filled the the air, mingled with the faint aroma of zitcreme and aqua net.

"Dude," Matt said, quietly so as to not arouse the attention of the Library Nazis. "You wanna know what's bogus? Your little horse people, that's what's bogus. Some dude porked a horse, and now his freak offspring are roaming the earth."

"Centaurs," I corrected him. "They're called Centaurs, dude, and the female of the species can kill your ranger in about two hits."

Matt blew a gasket. "DON'T YOU EVEN THINK OF IT, DUDE! THAT'S TOTALLY BOGUS DM BULLSHIT!!! I'LL REPORT YOU TO TSR AND HAVE YOU DISBARRED!!!!!"

I didn't have time to tell Matt how bogus that was, as the librarian told us to leave and the bell for class rang anyway.

When I got home from school that day, my old man was glued to the set and I missed both Little House on the Prairie AND Enos that night. It left me with emotional scars I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

So you see, those who think that my criticism of Reagan is based on ignorance and malice should know that while they get all their propaganda about the Reagan era from Rush Limbaugh, I was there. I lived it.

With the uproar over the legalization of gay marriage in Massachussetts last week, plus the hysterical right-wing crucifixion of President Bill Clinton for getting a little action, I have come to the conclusion that conservatives just need to get laid. They're like a bunch of repressed puritan amish folk, acting as if it's the end of the world because they caught Zebediah fucking chickens in the barn. Leave ol' Zeb alone, you sexually frustrated cons! Just because you can't get any chicken noogie, it doesn't mean you have to ruin HIS fun. Besides, who are YOU to impose YOUR morals on the rest of society? Who are YOU to decide what the defintion of love or marriage is?

I know, I know - "Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman, blah blah blah". Yeah, whatever you say, Reverend Swaggart. Man, woman, chicken, what's the difference? You're thinking in black & white - there are gray areas, you know. Graaaaaaaay areas. Herman Goerring said that the first step towards Fascism is gender absolutism, and here you cons go, goosestepping right back to the Third Reich. Today, you're whining about high school health teachers giving dildo demonstrations to your kids, tomorrow you're slapping pink triangles on homosexuals and loading them onto box cars.

I'm not gay, but I think the Massachussetts ruling is exciting news. I've been having a relationship with an old copy of the Sears catalog for about 30 years now. We're very much in love, and completely devoted to one another. Yet if I were in the hospital, my beloved Sears catalog would have no legal right to visit me, nor would it be entitled to a share of my estate should I expire. Perhaps with this wonderful, enlightened decision in Massachussets, the time will soon come when a consenting adult and his Sears catalog can walk down aisle, hand in hand, without being judged or condemned for the crime of loving one another.

I was awakened to a pleasant surprise on my radio alarm this morning - the soothing, dulcinous voice of Michael Moore. It's always great listening to Mike, because he's a true Man of the People, a blue-collar hero for blue-collar America. Sure, he hasn't worked a day's worth of hard labor in his life, but that only adds to his working-class charm.

Anyhoo - After a searing diatribe against Rush Limbaugh's pill-hopping hypocrisy, in which he demanded that Rush be tossed into a deep dark hole to rot and die, Mike attacked the evils of our capitalist system and how it exploits the working class.

I found this enlightening because unlike Rush Limbaugh - Mike is no hypocrite. He doesn't profit from the blood, sweat, and tears of the working man. On the contrary - Mike divides all the profits from his books and movies equally amongst the people who produce them. Everyone from the folks who work the presses that print his wonderful books, right down to the gal who brings him his gallon of raw cookie dough every six minutes - they all get a big fat check from Mike. The only profit Mike takes from his work is the satisfaction that some poor working slob won't be living in abject squalor because a rich corporate fat cat took all the loot for himself. Even more astonishing is that Mike relinquishes all creative control over his books and films to the people who actually do the labor. The famous rabbit scene in Roger & Me? That was the brainchild of Todd, the college intern who follows Mike around and picks up his empty beer cans and twinkie wrappers. The part in Bowling for Columbine where Mike gets a free gun at the bank? That idea was actually suggested by Rico, the undocumented worker who details Mike's Lexus every Tuesday, then voted on by committee, and finally submitted to Mike for compulsory inclusion in the film. You see, Michael doesn't only PREACH the doctrine of socialism, he also LIVES it. Of course, there aren't the usual 10 million dead peasants that usually precede socialist utopias, but have patience...Rage Against the Machine has already agreed to headline at Mike's Great American Purge Tour.

Bush's first trip to Europe in his entire life isn't going so well. I haven't seen the Brits this angry since Churchill dragged them kicking and screaming into WW2.

"The Nazis are evil doers!" Churchill said. "They won't stop until all of Europe is under their boot!" Woooooo scary. Here comes the Nazi boogeyman! Everybody stop having anal sex and do what ol' Winnie the Warmonger says!

Now it's 78 years later, and to quote Fozzie Bear: "It's deja vu all over again." This time, GeeDubya is itching to start Dubya Dubya Three over terrorist boogeymen, and his lapdog Tony Blair is falling for it just as FDR did in '42. And let's not forget how the Gipper brainwashed Mags Thatcher into helping him invent commie boogeymen in the 80's.

It seems like history does repeat itself. Every few generations, some crazy American cowboy warns Europeans about some great new evil and then proceeds to bomb the crap out of innocent civilians. When are we going to learn, as the French have, that the best way to deal with tyrants to offer them a hand in trust and friendship?

Looks like Bushie has done it again. It appears that all the banks and government offices are closed today. I can't even get to the post office to pick up the complete Saved by the Bell boxed set that I won on eBay. I stood out there for 20 minutes, banging on the front door while right-wing extremist postal workers hid in the darkened interior, snickering at me. Is this Dumbya's idea of revenge for getting bitch slapped by the WTO?

Just weeks after the truth came out about big fat idiot Rush Limbaugh being a crack-addicted heroin freak, we're treated to another revelation about a right-wing hypocrite. Sean Hannity, hate-radio icon and avid proponent of the quagmire in Iraq, is a draft-dodging chickenhawk. Information I have uncovered reveals that while American heros like John Kerry, Al Gore, and Howard Dean were risking life and limb fighting for their country, Sean Hannity was lurking around playgrounds and elementary schools for god-knows-what perverted reasons. I guess it makes sense - No republican president since Eisenhower served a day in the military. Right-wingers like to pound the war drums, but where are they when the metal hits the meat? Sitting at home, watching the whole thing on CNN.
Compounding Hannity's treachery is the fact that many of his fellow Irish immigrants were handed rifles and drafted into the Vietnam war as soon as they stepped off the boat, as portrayed in the recent Martin Scorcese film, Escape from New York. They didn't have the choice to stay home and spew hate-speech across the public airwaves like chickenhawk Hannity.
But let not your heart be troubled - Hannity's fate grows nigh. Brave Americans like Edward Asner, who stormed the beaches of Normandy and killed 120 Japanese with his bare hands, are working to get the word out of Hannity's cowardice. It's only a matter of time before another right-wing hypocrite has a date with karma.

A few visitors to this blog seem to think that they know all there is to know about the United States Constitution. Just let me start by reminding you right-wing dittoheads that I, like most enlightened, progressive-minded people, actually went to a university and got an education. While you were trying desperately to memorize the line: "Would you like fries with that?", I was majoring in Constitutional Law, Gender Studies, and Interpretive Clog Dancing at UC Berkeley. So excuse me if I don't fall all over myself in total awe of your snotty little pearls of wisdom.
The fact is, even the most brilliant minds in the nation don't know what the Constitution really means. It's all metaphorical, like the Bible. That's why Al Gore, in his infinite wisdom, referred to it as a "living, breathing document", written by a bunch of white slaveowners in powdered wigs that had no idea of what life would be like in 2003. Thankfully, we have liberal justices to decipher and translate the document's true meaning according to the times we live in. If strict-constructionists had their way, blacks would still be slaves, women would have no say in government, and poor holocaust survivors would be denied their right to vote in Florida.
Oh wait - it's already that way. Thanks Dubya!

Looks like it's back to the coat hangers for our daughters - the right-wing religious zealots have passed a partial birth abortion ban. Now watch as the bodies pile up from botched back-alley abortions, all thanks to Bush and his big oil baron bible thumpers who want to control our bodies. Since Dumbya declared an end to military operations aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, the religious nuts have waged a war on the Bill of Rights. From our 1st amendment Protection against Religion, to our 4th amendment Right to Terminate an Unwanted Pregnancy, Hitler Ashcroft and his goose-stepping, cat-hating cronies have been shredding the Constitution like so much um...shredded paper...and stuff. The right-wing spin machine, with its scare mongering depictions of babies getting their brains sucked out while still alive, has turned a beautiful moment in a young woman's liberation from white male hegemony into a brutal, monstrous act. With their deluded crusade to protect an imaginary "right-to-life", the right-to-lifers have trampled over the right-to-choose, and the right-to-die, and the right-to-choose-to-die. Shame! SHAAAAAAME! I'd sell my 17 degrees in gender studies to see the Bush twins get pregnant, then forced to carry the squirming fetuses inside them to term as punishment for their father's fascist fiddling with reproductive rights.